


Thermals

by Jay_eagle



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Douglas Whump, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 17:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jay_eagle/pseuds/Jay_eagle
Summary: A response to prompt 5 of the Fandot Summer Christmas celebration, in which Douglas comes a cropper in the cold through over-confidence and Martin fortunately comes to the rescue...





	Thermals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linguini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linguini/gifts).



> For the brilliant 'guini, to whom I promised a hypothermic-Douglas fic many, many moons ago - Thank you and Fitz for all the Summer Christmas shenanigans and organisation!

The noise of crunching snow comes to Douglas as if from a million miles away. Is he on GERTI? For a moment – for many moments – he can’t place anything. He is slumped in a seat at a peculiar angle, and something is tickling his cheek unpleasantly. _Leaves? Can’t be…_ It takes a vigorous shaking for him to even attempt to crack open his eyes, and he shuts them again almost as quickly. Everything was dark, anyway.

 

“Douglas?” More shaking, and Douglas groans. “ _Douglas_?”

 

“M-Martin?” Douglas’ thoughts have slowed to a trickle, and someone’s replaced blood with ice-water in his veins. “What’s – what…?” Sleep summons him, and he begins to drift.

 

“No, no, no.” Martin’s hand _cracks_ across Douglas’ cheek, and he jolts. The sting of the slap reaches him, but only distantly, and then he is being hauled sideways and up, out of his open car door.

 

_(Oh yes – he’d been out, in the hire car. Why had he been out?)_

 

“You can walk?” Martin is manhandling him, dragging him along the snowy hillside, the snow crunch-crunching under their paired steps. Douglas’ dopey brain slots the earlier crunching together with the fact of Martin’s approach, and he shivers.

 

“Please walk, Douglas – the paramedics can’t get to us, not tonight, not up here… please – I have to get you back on my own.” Martin tugs at Douglas, and Douglas groggily tries to put one foot in front of the other. “ _Please_ – that’s it, easy does it.” Martin urges him along and Douglas does his best to comply, though his brain is clamouring at him to just give up and go back to sleep. Only Martin's insistence that he  _move_ keeps him going, only for Martin is he prepared to override what seems like logic and shuffle onwards.

 

“What happened?” Douglas is exhausted, has surely never felt this tired, not even when Emily was small or when nightshift after nightshift had stolen his sleep away in his junior pilot days.

 

“You insisted –“ Martin huffs with effort as he helps Douglas over a small log – “You insisted on going out, in a blizzard, down a _mountain_ , for butter.”

 

“Butter.” Douglas pronounces the word carefully, rolling it twice on his tongue, as if trying to taste it. He staggers, and Martin slips.

 

“Careful!” Recovering, Martin gropes for a better hold round Douglas’ waist. “We’re nearly back – just a few more steps, come on.”

 

“Butter…”

 

“Couldn’t have corn for dinner without it, you said.” Douglas’ eyes are shut again, and he feels Martin lean him against something tall and wooden and ridged. _Tree?_ He muses, absently, but then hears the jingle of keys, and –

 

“Oh. The cabin.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

A rush of warm air billows from the door Douglas hears Martin creaking open. A wonderful pine scent invites them inside, and Douglas finally begins to shiver in earnest as if to argue against the heat now enveloping the two of them.

 

He is ushered to something soft – _sofa_ , his brain supplies – and feels Martin drawing all the blankets he can source over him, smoothing Douglas' forehead in hands still indistinct through gloves. “Did…” Douglas hesitates, speaking as though from a long way off. “Did I manage to get the butter?” He clears his throat. "I can't remember."

 

“You took the car.” Martin pauses, and heaves a breath before stepping away. Douglas can hear him rustling with something, and opens his eyes to try and see what Martin is doing, where he’s gone. “Hours ago, you left, and I was so worried – I came out, in the end to try to find you, and –“

 

“I crashed.” Douglas remembers at last, the stomach-churning skid off the mountain track, the slipping backwards as he panicked and tried to select a lower gear, forgetting he was driving a loaned automatic… “I knocked my head, but - the tree. The tree saved me.”

 

“ _I_ saved you.”

 

Douglas snorts a wet laugh, inhaling fluff from the blankets and hearing the crackle as Martin finally ignites the higgledy-piggledy logs in the grate that he’s been working on. “But without the tree…” Douglas tries to tease, but comes up short as he realises how that sentence should end.

 

“Without the tree stopping you rolling backwards…” Martin collapses onto the wide settee beside him, and Douglas isn’t sure which of them is shaking now.

 

“Come here.” He opens his arms, and Martin presses into him, burying his head in Douglas’ chest. “I’m OK.”

 

“You were hypothermic when I found you. I could have been too late.” Martin’s voice is muffled, but he is speaking directly into Douglas’ heart. Douglas understands, even when Martin’s next sentence doesn’t finish. “What if…?”

 

“No.” Douglas shudders, and moans as the quake sends a powerful, aching throb through all of his bones. Sensation is returning to the tips of his fingers and toes now, and he is not sure he’s grateful for it – the burning is agonising, the urge to cringe away from the heat overpowering – even though his core still feels dipped in liquid nitrogen. “I’m fine.”

 

“You always say that.” Martin shifts upwards to stare at him, and Douglas forces himself to meet the gaze steadily, trying to allay the fear he can see alight in Martin’s eyes.

 

“I am. Promise.”

 

“Even your head?”

 

Douglas probes the cut on his temple and winces, but nods. “It’s not serious. Just stunned me, I think.”

 

Martin’s eyes flit over Douglas’ forehead, but after a visual examination he seems to accept this assertion - albeit with a grimace to echo Douglas’ own. “Thawing?”

 

“Extremities, yes.” Douglas flexes his fingers to show Martin. He grimaces. “The middle of me might take a while longer.”

 

"Oh!" Martin leaps off the sofa so quickly that Douglas is left gaping and grumbling. “I forgot!”

 

“What?” Douglas sounds peevish in spite of himself. “I’m cold without you,” he tries, then immediately feels guilty to see Martin’s shame-faced hurry. “I’m joking,” he half-lies.

 

“I’m making hot chocolate. The paramedics, on the phone - they said I should do that.” Martin clatters round the kitchen of their hired cabin, the cabin which had seemed such a good idea to book as a romantic getaway when they’d needed to fly their passenger deep into the Smoky Mountains for the weekend.

 

“Let me help…” Douglas slides off the couch, but on landing with a thump on the floor discovers that his limbs aren’t inclined to cooperate with his ambitions towards the vertical.

 

“No need.” Martin hastens back towards him, bearing two mugs. “Done it.”

 

Douglas accepts one of the cups with a pleasured groan. “You are a god amongst co-pilots,” he murmurs, carried away with relief and gratitude.

 

“Goodness.” Martin finally toes off his snow boots and shrugs off his outerwear, tucking his ski jacket over Douglas’ knees before sinking to the floor next to him. “How d’you feel?”

 

“Much better.” Douglas sips gingerly at the mug. “Here.” He elbows the blankets open – struggling with the myriad layers Martin has enveloped him inside. “Come in.”

 

Martin burrows, cuddling into Douglas’ torso – a warm presence Douglas appreciates as inexpressibly comforting, both physically and mentally. The two of them meditate for a while, watching the fire eat away at the twigs, dissolving the fingers of frost that find their way into the log cabin before they can settle and form. Sap snaps and pops, but it’s the only sound to break the silence besides their measured breathing, calmed now from the frantic, huffing desperation of an hour before.

 

Douglas’ eyes are heavy again, but now it’s contented balminess pulling him under, not icy distress. He has Martin, after all… Martin will keep him warm, and safe, and loved, at least until the blizzard is gone and the morning creeps in... and hopefully for long after that, Douglas muses, with a throb of appreciation at the Richardson luck he is once again enjoying.

 

“I love you,” he whispers, and feels the last icicle inside him melt away at Martin’s sighed repetition of the endearment.

 

“Love you too.” Martin pokes him gently. “You clot.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on Tumblr as jay-eagle.tumblr.com - do stop by and say hello!


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